A few stories from my life…

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4 letters, 5 words

Most of our life revolves around them, little boxes that are branded with these words and tucked in corners of the maze in our heads and hearts.

Funnily enough sometimes they form a cycle and run after each other.

It starts with the little things that go unnoticed, how that one unruly strand of her hair always sets itself free and swishes past her face, the tense eyebrows while she reads a line, over and over again, a misplaced snort at the end of her long laugh, or the way she shuts her eyes when she bumps into someone, unwilling to face their angry eyes.

Like then turns into love, actually a concoction of love and fear. You bare your heart out to them, and hand it over. It’s theirs to keep, in return all you ask for is a piece of their heart and a place in their lives.
Is it too much to ask? A fair bargain indeed!

But with love stems fear, what if they stop loving you one day, pack their bags and leave?
How could they, you ask.
But love was never an agreement, only a promise to love. Not a cage or a prison to keep someone in. Nor a lost suit to pay damages in tears and curses.

After all the one who wins in a loss has lost, too.

With love out of the window and fear sitting drenched and cornered, hate brings its bags along to stay. Eating at you, one bit at a time. Blaming you for listening to love.
‘Look how easily love left!’, it chides. Mocks. Laughs.

You clutch hate and it reassures you that it would never leave you, never let you forget what love has done.

Let’s get revenge, it roars. Fear, too timid to raise its voice agrees along. You foster hate, feed it, watch it grow. Stalk, gossip, investigate and burn. Bewildered at how someone who has caused you pain can stay happy.
How is it fair?

Hate builds its bridges, towns and palaces in your heart. You fill each room with one person, the ones who wouldn’t give you their hearts, the cheats who took yours. Every hurt, every pain is allotted rooms, one at a time.

Time passes, the palaces become old, some tear down, new constructions take place and the hurt gets pushed away, still lurking in a corner. But now you have befriended hide.

Hide tells you to hide, your heart, your feelings, your secrets, your life, your pain, your love. You camouflage love with friendship, buy enough masks for the number of people you meet and smile, a practiced one, not too happy nor too sad.

No one ever tells you that its okay to brood, sit down and cry, like the way the 5 years old you would wail when you scraped your knee. All this hiding, hating, liking, loving is a painful cycle.

So why don’t we just love?
Love those who love us and the ones who do not. Love and watch them pack their bags and walk right out of our hearts, never pulling down the shutters but keeping them open for more love to walk in. To not try and mend those cracks, let them stand to commemorate all that we had once had.

Forgive ourselves, for all the failure and the heartbreak, for the pain and the misjudgment.

It isn’t so easy to keep loving, but as long as we learn to stand up and love again after the Hide, it is all good. After all learning to let go and continue to love and forgive is but a sign of maturity and a true human being, is it not?
Lovely post so well written story teller 🙂